Tag: Copyright

In a case that first originated in the Dutch library system, the Court of Justice of the European Union–the chief judicial authority of the EU–has ruled that lending of e-books and physical books should be treated the same. The action brought concerns about the ‘one copy, one user’ model, which blocks a library from lending out more than one copy of an e-book at a time.

The case hinged on the interpretation of a 10-year-old EU directive covering book lending, which states “that the exclusive right to authorize or prohibit such rentals and loans belongs to the author of the work.

Right now, the main objective of the Commission is to give content creators a fair pay for their work by demanding companies to give creators a bigger percentage of ad-revenue. Perhaps blockchain-based media platforms will have a more positive turnout for content creators without the use of a third party.

With Blockchain-based social networks continuous growth, the EU so far does not have a problem with them, perhaps it might be from the community moderators who flags guideline breaking content? Or the fact that all revenue earned from the content goes directly to the author rather than through a third party?

Currently, cable operators in E.U. countries are allowed to re-transmit programming from other nations’ broadcasters whose satellite transmission footprint falls over their territory. Cable operators in Belgium, for example, are able to capture BBC signals and can re-transmit BBC programming as long as they clear rights with a collecting society and remunerate the BBC.

The proposed changes would extend this system of rights clearance to the online world, to broadcasters’ live-streaming and catch-up digital services, with rights being cleared centrally by collecting societies. Broadcasters would only be required to clear rights to programs in the TV operators’ country of origin.

Territory-by-territory licensing, the backbone of the European film and TV industries and Hollywood’s billion-dollar revenues from the continent, looks like it will survive the European Commission’s push for a unified digital market in Europe.

That, at least, is the message that is now loud and clear from the commission, the executive arm of the European Union, as senior industry figures in Europe now buy into it.

The European Commission is expected to propose new EU-wide rules that would hand news publishers “legal certainty and bargaining power” against online services using their content, according to previously reported internal documents. The new rules make up part of the bloc’s copyright proposals to be presented later this month.

The commission is putting forward the new draft rules “to have a balance in the value chain, not against anybody, not against American platforms, but in the interest of our creative sector and to stabilize their business cases,” said European Digital Commissioner Günther Oettinger at the Digital Life Design conference in Brussels.

Pitched battles between traditional and digital media giants, copyright holders and networks are set to reignite ahead of new proposals aimed at harmonizing copyright law across the European Union.

The European Commission, the EU’s executive body, will present its plans to update Europe’s copyright legislation at the end of this month. But a draft proposal of the Commission’s plans has already leaked and is drawing fire from all sides. Critics say it could do serious damage both to legacy media companies and internet upstarts.

Fifteen years of bitter battles between old media and disruptive digital upstarts over copyright have led the European Commission’s long-awaited reforms of the system down a blind alley.

Instead of a coherent vision that produces winners and losers, the draft proposals on the so-called copyright directive fudge crucial questions about how artists can earn money in the digital age, and whether generations of internet users can avoid committing a crime for unwittingly accessing protected intellectual property.